Can Marriage / Couples Counseling Help Us?
These are some of the most common reasons many other couples have given me for seeking counseling. If you can relate to any of these and you are committed to improving the quality of your relationship and life together, marriage or couples counseling may be the answer for you:
- Are you having communication problems?
- Are you tired of fighting with each other or having the same fight over and over again?
- Are you frustrated because you don’t feel like you’re ever heard, or when you are heard you’re misunderstood?
- If you have children, do you disagree often on how to parent?
- Have you tried numerous times to have things turn out differently, only to find them very much the same?
- Do you question if you still love the person you are with?
- Are you bored in your relationship?
- Do you feel like you are two trains passing in the night, wondering what you ever had in common?
- Is infidelity something you worry about or has already occurred in your relationship?
- Are either—or both—of you struggling with addictions such as alcohol, drugs, food, sex or gambling?
Marriage/Couples Counseling Can Help You Heal, Recover, Reconnect
I have worked with many couples and families over the past 25 years. And, the work we’ve done together has helped many of them successfully heal, recover, and reconnect with each other. As a result of marriage/couples counseling, most couples report that they:
- Have a much closer, more intimate, and deeper relationship
- Know themselves and each other much better
- Feel heard and can tolerate the discomfort of disagreement while still treating each other with respect
- Know how to have conversations about difficult topics—while staying connected throughout the process
- Continue to grow even closer over time
Increase Your Chances for Success
If you are considering marriage/couples counseling, the following may be of help to you in determining if marriage/couples counseling might benefit you. Over the course of many years, I have found that there are a few factors that can increase the chances for success:
- Seek help sooner rather than later. The more hurt, the more resentments, and the greater the disconnect between you, the longer and more effort it will take to repair the relationship. If you seek marriage/couples counseling earlier, you may need only simple “tweaking” in your communication to get back to that closeness you are missing. But…
- It’s almost never too late to seek help. I say almost never because sometimes one or the other partner is coming to marriage/couples counseling to end the relationship. While I encourage partners to hang in there to at least come to understand what went wrong, and to learn how to improve their relationship skills, if one partner has made up their mind to leave, they might do so no matter what is learned in the therapy. So, to increase your chances for success, it is important that both parties want the relationship to work.
- Don’t assume that an affair cannot be overcome. Affairs are usually symptoms of problems in the relationship. Just like a fever is only a symptom of an underlying illness, affairs are a symptom of other problems. Couples willing to bring the pain and all the other feelings related to the affair to therapy have healed and even become closer after the affair. So, don’t assume that an infidelity or an affair is the end. It could actually be a new beginning.
- Be willing to look at yourself. The most successful couples are those in which each partner is willing to take a look at their behaviors, beliefs, feelings and attitudes and begin to think about how they WANT to be in the relationship, no matter how their partner is behaving. Blaming each other only keeps us stuck. Therapy can help you untangle blame and create a safe, secure environment to get honest and be vulnerable with your partner about who you really are and the kind of life you hope to create together.
- Be prepared to work. Therapy is not for the faint of heart. If you are tired of either the silence or the arguments, be prepared to be challenged in a caring, respectful and non-threatening way, to grow to be the best person you can be. Your way hasn’t been working or you wouldn’t be seeking therapy. If you are willing to at least come to therapy, to be honest and open, to do your best to listen to feedback, to examine your behaviors and work on changing what you can change, you will be surprised at the difference this will have on your relationship.
Take the Next Step… Get a FREE phone consultation…
Contact me to schedule a FREE initial telephone interview. We’ll discuss your situation. We’ll get to know one another a little better. Together, we’ll determine if therapy can help, and if you feel comfortable with me as your therapist.
Learn More About Marriage/Couples Counseling and Therapy
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Articles/Blog – Marriage and Relationships